white djuna pages _ fiction

_

SHE
Was reading a novel, remembered all the readers that can not keep the anxiety and run their hands with speed towards the ending pages of a book. She compared herself to them, – i’m lucky i don’t have that urge – nevertheless she was intrigued by how many white pages the book she was reading had.

Some of the knowledge her graphic design degree gave her was that a book is made by a folded sheet divisible by four, eight or even twelve. She visualised certain axioms: a book never has odd pages, she laughed to herself remembering her brother teaching her axioms of second degree equations in the kitchen table at her university days, the jokes between true and ridiculous axioms. There is something the ridiculous has over the truth, it makes you laugh more.

She thought: each novel, each book has its own non-written pages, she remembered Saussure and versioned its words – a book is the written and the non-written –.

These four pages of her edition of Djuna Barnes are four white pages of Djuna, they are not two, or one, that white belongs to Djuna, to that novel in particular and to nothing else.

She imagined an exhibition at a gallery of white pages from diferente novels. Of course each white ages it own way, a sort of Malevich with subtle differences, but instantly she visualised all the pages that would be loose from the book. She imposed herself another exercise: search all the white pages of a novel, take the whole folded sheet away of the book and make a version of the story with the written and white pages she got out if it.

This in her mind trying to see what shape it might take. For the moment she can not hold a book in her hands and keep the urge to go towards the end and check how many white pages does the book own, not because the ending specifically, but because she would like to ask the author what was left unsaid.